Brian Davison
Member
How do I make a copy of my HD bootable on a USB drive (60GB HDD)?
I have a Dell Inspiron M101Z and have just had the hard drive replaced, so need to restore my System (or spend days re-installing everything!!)
I can't restore to the disk I am running from, so need to boot from a separate USB drive containing the OS for the laptop (M/B drivers etc) and Drive snapshot, my backup software. I can then restore from the backup USB to the internal HD, driven by the USB I booted from.
the big issue is that this is a Dell, so the original system (boot) partition was not the first on the disk. Dell have a hidden partition first, (which you cant back up or copy!!!!!) followed by drive C:
The copy restored to the USB drive wont boot , and I think it's because it's set up to be the second partition on the drive but is actually the first on the clean USB drive.
in XP this was easy - I edited boot.ini to tell it it was now on partition zero and I thought this was the job BCD easy was supposed to be able to do for win7 (or replace MBR with one that will work for that setup).
In short I have a win7 installation on a USB drive, (single partition) with all the drivers for my laptop, and I want to make it bootable, so I can work on the internal drive whilst it is unmounted - how do I do that step by step??
(PS the USB drive is already set as active)
I have a Dell Inspiron M101Z and have just had the hard drive replaced, so need to restore my System (or spend days re-installing everything!!)
I can't restore to the disk I am running from, so need to boot from a separate USB drive containing the OS for the laptop (M/B drivers etc) and Drive snapshot, my backup software. I can then restore from the backup USB to the internal HD, driven by the USB I booted from.
the big issue is that this is a Dell, so the original system (boot) partition was not the first on the disk. Dell have a hidden partition first, (which you cant back up or copy!!!!!) followed by drive C:
The copy restored to the USB drive wont boot , and I think it's because it's set up to be the second partition on the drive but is actually the first on the clean USB drive.
in XP this was easy - I edited boot.ini to tell it it was now on partition zero and I thought this was the job BCD easy was supposed to be able to do for win7 (or replace MBR with one that will work for that setup).
In short I have a win7 installation on a USB drive, (single partition) with all the drivers for my laptop, and I want to make it bootable, so I can work on the internal drive whilst it is unmounted - how do I do that step by step??
(PS the USB drive is already set as active)